


Cry for the Moon

by aguamala



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kim Seungmin-centric, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pre-Relationship, Pre-debut, graphic description of a panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26574196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aguamala/pseuds/aguamala
Summary: Seungmin's bad day culminates in a panic attack. Help comes in an unlikely form.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Kim Seungmin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 136
Collections: Seungmin-Centric Ficfest





	Cry for the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> This fic includes – and centers around – graphic descriptions of a panic attack. If that will trigger you or squick you out, I recommend passing on this fic.  
> Also, please note that panic attacks can manifest and be processed very differently by different people. This work is based on a combination of my experiences and the experiences of people who have shared moments like this with me. This fic is not to be taken as medical advice of any kind.  
> For prompt #97  
> Enjoy!

Seungmin’s vocal lesson does not go particularly well. His throat is sore, regardless of the scarf he wore despite it being early autumn and the fact that he hasn’t had much other than soup in days. 

He probably picked something up when he took public transportation to the company building instead of calling a manager to ask for a car a couple days ago when his last class got out early. He should’ve known better, honestly, but no one has noticed it enough to lecture him yet so he’s counting that as a win, small and insignificant as it may be. 

He has to force his voice out. He knows it, his coach knows it, and he knows his coach knows it. They’re both equally frustrated. 

All the good form in the world won’t save him. No cathedral ceiling-high soft palette, no needle-threaded passaggio, no iron-set breath support can make up for the rasp in his voice and the roughness of irritated vocal cords. 

He’s even more annoyed when his coach lets him out early, sending him off with instructions to have tea with honey and rest. He has progress to make, and his stupid throat is preventing it. In the end, he has only his immune system to blame, but that’s a much more nebulous concept to get annoyed at. 

It’s an easy, almost thoughtless decision to head to a practice room four doors down and plunk out notes on a piano, trying in vain to finish the lesson by himself. He needs to add piano – at least chords – to the end of the seemingly-eternal list of Things to Work On in His Nonexistent Spare Time. It would be so much easier to practice his form and position if he didn’t have to stop every three seconds to reposition his hands or work through odd rhythms. It would also be easier to practice if his vocal cords felt like something other than desert-fried sandpaper, but Seungmin can only ask for so much. 

Seungmin’s mind starts drifting, try as he may to keep it on the song at hand. Chan has started assembling a group, and Seungmin knows he plans to approach JYP about it soon, but Seungmin still has so many questions. Most are for himself, but he has plenty for Chan and even JYP as well. 

What are they going to have to go through to prove themselves? Seungmin knows self-formed groups rarely – if ever – skip straight to debut without some other fight. 

Are they ready? Who knows what JYP might throw at them. 

Will they all make it? Seungmin isn’t sure he wants to debut if it isn’t with everyone. It wouldn’t feel right. Considering how close he’s gotten with the other 00-liners, it’s impossible to imagine a future without all of them. He’s sure Jisung and Hyunjin will get over whatever feud it is they have eventually, but Seungmin’s content with the knowledge that they won’t fight when he or Felix are within earshot. 

Does Chan really think Seungmin is good enough to debut? He hasn’t been training for all that long, relatively speaking. 

Does Seungmin really think this is what he wants to do? Sure, he’d knit together arguments and promises and draped them over his parents like weighted blankets and soft sweaters, but as the glamour is fading and the exhaustion sets in his conviction is wavering slightly. Not much, but enough to question. 

Does Seungmin really think he’s ready for this? Contracts are hard to back out of. They’re not like a job at the corner store that he can quit if it isn’t working out. 

Does Seungmin know what he’s getting into? There’s a lot that goes into being an idol that doesn’t play into trainee days, though the company does its best to simulate–

Seungmin’s alarm rings. Huh, he doesn’t remember setting that. 

He slips his music back into his bag, and the practice room door closing behind him sets him on edge in a way that hasn’t happened before. 

Seungmin’s throat twinges as he takes a too-deep breath, and he twists as he walks, digging through his bag for the mini first-aid kit he knows is in there. As he approaches the door to his next destination, he pauses before entering, pushing that extra bit further until his fingertips brush cold plastic and he grabs for it, triumphant. 

All the cough drops Seungmin has in his kit are cherry. Ugh. He makes a mental note to pick up some more of the honey lemon ones the next time he’s at a convenience store, then immediately decides to make a physical note and pulls out his phone. 

“C’mon, Seung, you ready for dance?” 

Seungmin sends a useless glance out the window, catching sight of a waning crescent moon. That’s what he is. A waning crescent. Fading, curved, pockmarked. 

The door thuds closed behind him, sealed with a click. 

Most of what Seungmin processes during the dance practice is pain. A heavy ache surrounds his whole body, twisting at his tendons and pushing at his joints. Even his head weighs more than it does usually. Chan might joke that it means his head is full of extra knowledge today but Seungmin thinks in this case it’s just full of criticism. Most of it isn’t from today, instead memories dredged up by a pool net of anxiety dragging the depths, but it’s still present and it’s still painful. 

“Seungmin. You’re getting off. Concentrate on the beat and follow it.” 

He thinks he might be going through a growth spurt, but those have always come on gradually for him. Right now he feels like his limbs are one of those time-lapse videos of plants growing, but maybe if one of those videos was edited to have muffled screaming coming from the plants. Yeah, that sounds about right. 

“Again from the top. Everyone, try to make your movements sharper this run.” 

Sharp movements cause sharper pain. Seungmin’s entire body is tensed in anticipation, arched right in the median of movement, each muscle seeming to be on the verge of cramping. 

“Hmm. You all can do better. Again.” 

Is the abdominal pain hunger, lactic acid, or something else? Seungmin is losing catalogue of his pains and what source they point to. Good. He doesn’t care. 

“Alright. That’s fine. You’re all free to go.” 

As soon as Seungmin stops moving, the pain is supplemented by a bone-deep exhaustion settling heavy onto his limbs. That’s fun. 

It’s fine. He can do this. He just has to pack up and – the world is shaking a little – head home and he can – are his hands shaking too? or is that just his vision – clean up and rest – his breathing shouldn’t be this loud, right? – and tomorrow will be better. 

Everyone else is gone. Where did they go? How long has he been staring at his bag and his hands and waiting for the world to stop? 

Three eternities pass, and Seungmin stands. 

The hallway is strangely fuzzy, but Seungmin can’t focus on anything long enough to tell whether it’s motion blur from his body shaking or if his brain is finally melting out his ears. 

Practice room windows pass like trains in the night, rectangles of refuge and rejection. Windows of ferris wheel carriages, dipping to meet him tantalizingly and soaring away again as he passes. Seungmin walks without stumbling, though every step he thinks he might. He skips straight over any room with a light on, casting cursory glances into the ones that seem empty. The first couple have people, illuminated by phones or laptops, but after ten seconds – or maybe it’s ten minutes? He’s not sure – an unlocked door swings open to a cool, dark, blessedly empty room. 

Seungmin pushes at the panic with a sieve, fumbling with his phone and dropping it and his bag just as the door swings closed. The last rectangle of light traces into a crescent, a sliver, then nothing. 

New moon. 

Starless night. 

Blissful dark. 

Seungmin sinks to his knees, shoving the panic down as effectively as using a tupperware lid to stop an overflowing sink. His hands are shaking so badly he only gets his phone a few inches above the floor before it falls again, the dull thud echoing through the room for forever. Or maybe it’s just the ringing in his ears. 

Hands curl into fists and knees draw up to a chest. Seungmin’s aware of the movements but they don’t feel like his. His body rapidly fades from his consciousness, becoming little more than a footnote to his mind’s turmoil and a hollow shell in which to house it. 

Panic, exhaustion and pain twine into some sort of convoluted roller-coaster in Seungmin’s chest, sliding out extremities only to come rocketing back and slam the breath out of his lungs again. 

He’s not sure he could move even if he tried to. 

Questions swirl like a brewing storm, hammering against his skull and demanding answers that no one has. 

_ I’m not good enough. I’m not cut out for this. They’ll all realize it soon and kick me out. _

Is my voice good enough? 

Worse, is my dancing good enough? 

Will I have to learn to rap? 

Am I handsome enough? 

Can I handle a job this close-knit? 

_ This isn’t the right choice. I’m wasting my time pursuing this when I could be doing things to further another career. My parents were only humoring me and they’ll expect me to leave soon.  _

Will I succeed? 

Would I be happier as a lawyer or a photographer or something else? 

Will my parents be proud of me if I continue this path?

Will I lose opportunities I never knew I’d get if I stay? 

Will I lose opportunities I never knew I’d get if I  _ leave? _

_ This isn’t what I really want to do. I haven’t thought through the implications of this. I’ll do something wrong and they’ll make me leave.  _

What if the fans don’t like me? 

Will I be able to ask for help when I need it? 

Do I want to have every moment of my public life – and some moments of my private life – hyperanalyzed and speculated about? 

Do I want every platonic relationship I ever have to be fascinated over as something more than it seems? 

Can I handle every romantic relationship I ever have to be hidden away or criticized to high hell and back?

Could I ever ask anyone else to handle that with me and for me?

Can I commit to the emotional toll? 

Can I commit to the  _ physical  _ toll?

_ I’m not prepared for this. I’m going to fall through and disappoint everyone. They’ll know I’m a failure and a fraud and never trust me again.  _

Do I know what I’m getting into? 

Am I good enough for it? 

Would I rather just live a normal life and finish high school and go on to do something unremarkable and mundane but stable and private? 

Can I balance all of this? 

Can I handle university after this? 

What can I even major in that won’t disappoint my parents but will also be easy enough to keep good grades in? 

Can I commit? 

Will I succeed? 

Am I enough? 

Can I? 

Will I? 

Do I? 

Can I d-Will I b-Do I w-Am I e-Would I m-What d-Can Do HowWhenAmWillWould–

“...touch you?” 

Seungmin’s shoulders are a scale, a delicate balancing act focused on staying level and even as the pressure piles higher. They’re a redistribution system of stress that doesn’t notice its support struts straining until they snap, crystalline, under the inevitability of gravity and time and everything is shattered on the floor. 

“...do for you?” 

There are hundreds of helium balloons trapped in his chest. Aren’t they supposed to be butterflies? The stories always make them seem elegant and fluttery, not overbearing and moments from popping on a splintering rib. Seungmin wants the butterflies; they probably won’t make his lungs feel like exploding. If his lungs explode, that means he can’t sing or dance or perform or–

“Min?”

Why is his heart stabbing him? A knife-blade metronome with awfully perfect tempo, a time-bomb puncturing his already straining and struggling ribs, shards of cathedral glass stained flawed gold and hopeless crimson and trembling olive and a thousand other desaturated shades of emotion pulsing in time with and directly against his life-force, 

“Breathe with me,”

Identifying limbs is impossible, but some part of him has been draped in Antarctic waters and the rest of him drizzled in hot wax. Stripes of hot and cold criss-cross and intersect into blooms of pain, snow-watered fire-flowers that erupt at random. Something about his body (if he still has one, and he’s growing less sure by the minute) is terrifyingly bad and wrong but he’s not sure how to find and fix it, if it’s even still there. 

“Why won’t you–”

Seungmin is an uprooted flowerbed, dragged into the sky by gale-force winds, tossed about in an endless tornado. He’s losing bits and pieces of himself every second, sod and roots and petals and stems crumbled away and lost to the heavy howling grey. Does he have a physical form anymore? He’s not sure. 

“Seungmin–”

There’s a clock ticking in his chest but every tick is an eternity and every tick is nothing at all. All he has to count are his breaths and he loses track every time he starts, the spiralling arrhythmic TV static wind in his brain drowning out any numbers and any thoughts. 

“–need you to–”

Seungmin is a merry-go-round on a setting that shouldn’t exist. Images flash by his vision but are buried by whirling gilded sand before he can see, let alone process. There’s someone just beyond the railings designating the waiting line, but they can’t come closer. Seungmin stays where he is, either out of fear of the shrieking horses tearing him apart or fear of himself bringin the hell out to them. 

“–Min–”

Is there anything out there? Anything beyond the shrinking walls of his mind and the pulsing in his fingertips and teeth? Could anything possibly exist beyond the confines of this cage in his head, beyond the impenetrable bars with no gaps between them and the reach of his own amorphous being?

“–please–”

Seungmin’s brain is one of those fishing-for-ducks games at American carnivals but the pond is a dark, vicious whirlpool and he’s fishing for an invisible coherent thought with a sewing needle on a string. Where did the thoughts go? Are they drowned? Can he get them back? Did they ever exist at all? 

“Seung!” Tight, frantic, panicked. 

“What!” Sharp, accusatory, startled. 

Jisung’s sitting in front of him, eyes wide and legs sprawled. Why is Jisung here? How did he get in? 

“Come back to me, Seung.” Careful, gentle, tentative. 

Seungmin’s back. Seungmin isn’t sure where from, but he thinks he was slammed back into his body at half the speed of sound and his brain is still rattling around in his skull. 

Of all the people to find him like this, why Jisung? Why the perfect golden boy who always knew what he wanted to do, who never seems to struggle to be liked or noticed? 

Why not Chan, who always knows what to say? Why not Minho, who’s experienced just about everything before? Why not Changbin, who hugs like the world is ending and like he could stay there for eternity? Why not Hyunjin, who asks questions he doesn’t expect Seungmin to answer? Why not Felix, who trips over his words and lands face-first in Seungmin’s heart? Why not even Jeongin, who cares for Seungmin despite his pestering and always knows how to snap him out of daydreams?

Seungmin realizes he’s hyperventilating. A sudden awareness of his body slams into him like a submarine: heavy, dark, and completely unforeseen. His hand is warm. A quick glance confirms Jisung is holding it, pulsing steadily at a tempo completely different from the one pounding up the back of his throat and shaking through his limbs. 

“Oh, thank fuck.” Soft, rushed, relieved. “You weren’t responding to anything; that was terrifying.” 

Seungmin thinks he chokes on his laugh, but moments later realizes it probably would’ve been scary for Jisung. Still, he thinks he reserves the right to claim it was scariest for himself. 

“Can you do something for me?” Jisung keeps rhythmically squeezing Seungmin’s hand as he nods. At Jisung’s encouragement, he adds a verbal affirmative as well. “Thank you. I’m going to talk you through a grounding exercise that helps me when I get like this. Okay?” 

Seungmin nods again. 

“Thank you. What are five things you can see?” 

1: Jisung, wide-eyed and earnest but concerned, unwrapping Seungmin like carefully lifting layers of cloth from around a glass ornament. 

2: a bag by the still-slightly-ajar door; is it his or Jisung’s? Seungmin doesn’t know and isn’t sure he cares right now. 

3: audio equipment, sharp-cornered and bulky, tucked around the edges of the room like a slumbering beast until the next gaggle of wide-eyed or weary trainees file in. 

4: a scuff mark on the floor, a little over an arm’s length away, curving in an unfairly graceful crescent. 

5: a hole in the wall next to the door from a failed acrobatics attempt years prior that hasn’t ever been fixed since cameras rarely come into this room; a hole Seungmin has heard the story of several times and a hole Seungmin has told the story of at least twice. 

“Okay, what are four things you can feel?” 

1: the floor, an unsettling neutral temperature and a sturdily uncomfortable hardness but Seungmin’s slept full nights on practice room floors and all things considered, this one isn’t that bad. 

2: his old baseball sweatshirt, no longer soft and now starting to pill on the inside from too many washes but still comfortable and big enough to hide any unwanted weight fluctuations in either direction. 

3: Jisung’s hand, still steadily pulsing in his, a warmth that is both distracting and reassuring against skin slowly becoming less likely to explode in a painful pounding rhythm. 

4: the drawstring of his shorts, pulled and tied too tight and digging sharply but ignorably into the soft space just above his hip bones. 

“That’s– that’s really good. Next, three things you can hear?” 

1: Jisung’s breathing; Seungmin still fails to match it but he thinks he’s getting a little closer. At least he’s breathing. 

2: music coming from the next room over (or maybe somewhere outside); soundproofing is all relative and he can feel the bass more than he can hear the tenor but it still counts. 

3: traffic drifts in from outside, though Seungmin isn’t sure if that’s just his brain thinking he should be able to hear traffic or if it’s actually there. 

“Thank you. Two things you can smell?” 

1: Jisung’s shampoo, some mixture of aloe and honey and soothingly sharp citrus that Hyunjin complains about all the time but Seungmin actually really likes. 

2: sweat, probably his own though he doesn’t know where Jisung came from because even if he knows he looked at the calendar – they’ve been jokingly calling it the family calendar for over a week now – this morning he can’t for the life of him remember anything anyone else was doing today and

“Breathe, Seung. What’s one thing you can taste?” 

1: the cherry cough drop he forced himself to suck on between vocal lessons and dance practice still lingers at the back of his mouth and on the sides of his tongue. 

“That’s really really good. Thank you for doing that for me.” 

Seungmin squeezes at Jisung’s hand, no longer feeling like his fingerprints might pulse off his fingertips. 

Seungmin’s very sure that Jisung explained his plan of how to get back to the dorms in excruciating detail but he honestly has no memory of what was said. In one ear and out the other, as it were. 

He knows he’s experiencing everything but his life seems to exist in flashes: a movie trailer of snapshots, a collage, a montage, a photobook of seconds. 

Jisung’s arm swinging the bag – Seungmin now remembers it does actually belong to him – up onto his back. The warmth of his other arm stays around Seungmin’s waist. 

“I got you.” Whether Jisung actually spoke or not, the message comes through loud and clear. Seungmin tucks himself against Jisung’s side and does his best to keep his legs steady. 

The stairwell is dizzying and Seungmin thinks he stumbles but not for more than a millisecond before hands are steadying him and soft noises he thinks might be words are pressed against his ears. 

Jisung summons a mask from the depths of his pockets and hooks it around Seungmin’s ears, pulling it down to cover his chin with a teasing smile. Teasing though it may be, his smile can’t quite escape the worry that still hovers around his eyes. 

It’s chilly outside, enough so to tug Seungmin another step or two back toward reality, and enough to let him press closer to Jisung than strictly necessary. 

An ambulance passes, lights bright but no siren, or perhaps just no siren that Seungmin can hear with his head as full of cotton fluff and moon dust as it is. 

Car lights swing by on pendulums, film frames just getting up to speed. The associated noise is muffled but present and it drips through Seungmin’s eardrums and into his brain. 

The dorm door creaks open, but Seungmin is looking at his feet to avoid tripping over the entrance rather than at who might be in the common area in view of the door. 

Jisung slides off both their jackets – for once hanging them neatly on the hooks instead of dropping his anywhere in the main area – and takes Seungmin’s hand to lead him to his room. 

“Hey, what the fuck are– Seungmin?” 

Finally raising his eyes, Seungmin finds Hyunjin on his bed, seemingly torn between staring wide-eyed at him and glaring accusingly at Jisung. 

“Hi, Jin.” It’s the first thing Seungmin’s said in quite a while and the harsh scrape of his voice across his throat is evidence enough. 

“Are you okay? What happened?” 

Seungmin just shrugs, not sure how to explain without worrying Hyunjin further. He gestures to Jisung, who follows him to the bathroom. If Jisung leaves Hyunjin while pulling a face, well, Seungmin knows they won’t really fight while he’s there. 

“Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight?” Jisung is bouncing slightly, hands fidgeting. Seungmin hands him his face soap and he simply shifts to turning it over in his hands. “Or can I join you in yours? Or do you want to sleep alone? I don’t want to pressure you, I just don’t know if you want to be alone or if you want–”

“My bed.” Talking is hard. Seungmin can’t get his brain to send full sentences out. Anyway, pliable as he may be after a panic attack, he’s still coherent enough to vehemently reject going anywhere near the ecosystem-waiting-to-happen that Jisung calls a bed. “You too.” 

“Oh! Okay! Thank you!” Jisung pulls Seungmin into a side hug (without asking this time, but Seungmin doesn’t have the energy to care). 

Jisung washes his face and haphazardly swipes on some moisturizer before retreating to sit on the closed toilet and play a phone game. Seungmin really doesn’t understand how his skin stays so nice when he doesn’t even know what a toner is. Hell, he only started using moisturizer because Chan and Changbin peer-pressured-slash-bullied him into it. 

Anytime anyone asks Jisung about his skincare routine, his response is “if it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid” and Seungmin hates that he can’t find a rebuttal. If he’s started using that phrase with his friends from high school, Jisung never has to know. 

Seungmin works his way through his nightly skincare routine, taking the time to even out his breathing every time it catches and make a mental itinerary of his schedule the next day. Some of his friends at high school find it weird that thinking about everything he has to do calms him down but he can control tomorrow. He may not know what’s coming next week, next month, or next year, but tomorrow only has a few standard deviations of uncertainty and he can handle that. 

He can also handle Jisung taking his hand again as they go back to Seungmin’s room. Hyunjin is there, out of bed this time, holding a sweatshirt. He offers it to Seungmin as they enter. 

“Here. For – um. I know you like oversized clothes when you’re stressed and uh. I thought this might help? So. Yeah.” 

Seungmin takes it with a smile, and Hyunjin seems to understand the gratitude, nonverbal as it may be. He retreats to his bunk, sliding his noise-cancelling headphones back on and all but disappearing under the covers. 

Jisung lets go of Seungmin long enough to steal a sweatshirt and sweatpants from Seungmin’s closet and pull them on, throwing a pair of pants at Seungmin while he’s at it. Hyunjin doesn’t stir at the noise, and Seungmin wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s already fallen asleep. 

They climb into bed with little fuss, both too exhausted to complain about elbows and knees in places they don’t belong. Seungmin’s pillows are distributed between them and his stuffed puppy is tucked against his chest as something he can crush without having to let go of Jisung’s hands

Seungmin speaks. The water he drank while they were in the bathroom lets him speak quietly without rasping over long vowels. 

“How did you know what to do? When you found me.” 

Jisung’s eyes are soft. 

“I have anxiety, so I get anxiety and panic attacks a lot. I’ve never been as unresponsive as you – at least, as far as I know –” he laughs a touch too bitterly for Seungmin’s taste “but the countdown thing is something I do with myself to help work me out of it.” 

“Oh.” Suddenly Seungmin can’t meet his eyes. 

“Oh?” Jisung tugs him a touch closer and Seungmin’s face warms. 

“You just … you seem so confident all the time. I know everyone has insecurities, but you’re so good at everything I could never think of what they might be. And everyone likes you, and all the coaches think you’re amazing. You just … you don’t seem like someone who struggles. And especially not with this.” 

There’s the bitter laugh again. Seungmin doesn’t like it. He wants to make Jisung laugh in the way that makes his mouth look like a heart, in the way that makes him squish his eyes closed and kick his legs. 

“You wear a mask long enough and people stop trying to look past it, if they even notice it’s a mask anymore.” It’s a non-answer that Seungmin doesn’t have the mental capacity to unravel right now, but on an instinctive level it makes sense. He’ll ponder over it and inevitably try to help Jisung somehow later, but for now… 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, that about sums it up.” 

Jisung stays facing Seungmin, idly toying with their joined hands. Seungmin’s pretty sure his eyes are half-lidded, given he doesn’t think he can normally see his eyelashes this much, but he and Jisung both continue staring at the tangle of fingers tucked between their chests. 

“Can I tell you a story? You don’t have to listen.” 

Seungmin makes a vaguely affirmative humming noise and Jisung lights up. 

“Okay, so y’know when Chan and I went to the supermarket like three – it might’ve been four, I dunno, time sorta blends together when we’re training like this, you know how it is – but anyway Chan and I went to the market three-ish days ago and – actually I do think it was four days ago because it was drizzling and this morning Jeonginnie was talking about it raining again this week, tomorrow maybe? I’ll check with him tomorrow – or I’ll check the weather app, that’s a thing I can do – but anyway we ran into…”

Jisung is pretty. Seungmin wants to poke his cheek. That always makes him smile. 

“…I was so lost, I swear, until Chan remembered I was…”

Seungmin thinks he might want to kiss Jisung. Somehow, that thought doesn’t scare him. A little part of his brain is saying it should but the rest is too exhausted from the hell-sent merry-go-round earlier that it’s smothered into submission. 

“…But apparently that was exactly what Chan didn’t…”

Seungmin can deal with emotions tomorrow. Anything that involves more thinking than counting to five can wait til tomorrow. 

“…And I was so lost until he said that what he…”

One of their phones lights up, but Jisung reaches over Seungmin and flips it face-down before Seungmin can move, all without stopping his stream of words for even a second. 

“…He was all like, ‘well what if it doesn’t do…’”

Seungmin’s focus slides in and out, wavering like the air above pavement on a hot day, flowing like kelp in a gentle current. 

“…So I said to him, ‘what’s the big deal? It’s easy to…’”

His brain feels like sponge cake, squishy and insubstantial. At least sponge cake is sweet. 

“…But then he was like, ‘if you want it so bad, why don’t…’”

Jisung is sweet. He’s so careful not to hurt Seungmin, but he’s not treating him like a piece of glass either. Seungmin should kiss him tomorrow – with consent of course, he’s not a  _ heathen _ – to thank him. 

“…Then he just kinda went off and I had to…”

In Seungmin’s mental itinerary, he pencils  _ talk to Jisung (and kiss him hopefully) _ right between breakfast and the group dance practice. 

“So, yeah. That was that.” 

Silence falls like dusk, letting sleep condensate like dewdrops on Seungmin’s eyelashes and fingertips. 

The room feels darker on the edges, but Jisung is still glowing. 

“I love you.” Lips to his forehead. Fireworks behind his eyelids. 

Warmth. 

Soft light. 

Full moon. 

**Author's Note:**

> I just want you all to know how close I was to naming this "Seungmin's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day"  
> You're welcome.  
> You can find me on twitter @/unaaguamala and my cc is aguamala  
> 


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